Yosemite and iOS 8 – Making Calls

So you’ve recently installed Yosemite (OSX 10.10) onto your MacBook Pro or other Mac device and you’ve got an iPhone running iOS 8.0.2 and you’re thinking, “Gee, I wish I could make phone calls with OSX through my phone… can’t believe I have to wait til iOS 8.1.”

Actually you don’t. You have to wait for iOS 8.1 for SMS text messaging through Messages and Apple Pay and a couple other things. You can make calls today through your phone on your OSX machine.

How you ask? Simple. Step one, open up Contacts… if you’re me, you double tap the command key which pops up the Alfred App and then type in the contacts. Type in the individuals name and bring up their contact card. Next to the individuals name, click the phone icon like here:

So you click on the phone and your iPhone running iOS 8 happens to be nearby and boom, you see this pop up in the upper right corner of your screen:

And you hear a dial tone and it’s like your MBP is now your phone – spiffy. And then the person on the other end picks up. 😮

And you have your call and life is good.

But then suppose someone calls you… and your phone is around. Well, if you’re not expecting it, you might be a little surprised when you hear your MBP ringing and you see this pop up in the upper right hand corner…

Pretty spiffy.

But what if you miss a call… no worries, OSX lets you know and it gets posted in your notification center. So after that coffee break, you walk back in and you see this in the upper right hand corner:

But what if you’re about to make a presentation to stockholders or colleagues or you’re busy and you don’t want to be bothered?

Just enable Do not Disturb within the Notification Center – just like you would so that you don’t get messages popping up and such… and walla, no phone calls ringing.

So no need to wait for iOS 8.1, sure there are some gems that come with that as well, but make your calls using your MBP to your hearts desire 🙂